All those networks II

In yesterday’s post we referred to networking that involved Chinese-cum-Sino-Thai networking as people of that ethnic origin “worked towards the monarchy.”

Related, in a recent Bangkok Post op-ed, Chairith Yonpiam, an assistant news editor, writes of “schools” and “colleges” designed to consolidate networks of the wealthy and the politically powerful (many of them with Chinese ethnicity). These organized “course” aren’t meant to teach anything. Rather, they are meant to “network” the ruling class. Some academics have written of these exercises in consolidating power.

Chairith’s op-ed is interesting in that it refers to senior judges calling “for the Supreme Court to scrap a study course, organised by the Judicial Training Institute, aimed at fostering connections between judicial authorities and those from other sectors, including senior business executives…”.

As Charith notes: “It has become a trend for public institutes and government agencies such as the National Defence College [NDC], Election Commission (EC), and more recently, the Royal Thai Police (RTP) to arrange such training courses.”

Supreme Court judges Boonkhet Poomthip and Anurak Sa-nga-areekul “also called for the court not to allow judicial personnel to join the prestigious NDC programme or other elite classes, including those organised by the Stock Exchange of Thailand, that aim to establish such connections.”

Both believed “that such courses are deemed unnecessary for judicial authorities.”

The worry seems to be that:

Clipped from https://www.freepik.com/

Such opportunities can compromise the image of judges, who need to behave impartially and dissociate themselves from any interest groups. These courses do the opposite. As they are designed to incubate and nurture connections, the judges will mingle with business groups. That might lead to problems down the road if their classmates end up as a conflicting party, directly or indirectly, in future litigation….

Those courses, they argue, have the potential to nurture a patron-client system that may result in double standards on the part of the judicial authorities.

In fact, the “courses” are meant to do exactly that. However, “patron-client” adds an unnecessary complication to what is actually going on. In any case, there’s plenty of money that goes the way of corrupt justices, even without “courses.”

What these “courses” are meant to do is establish and maintain ruling class cohesion. That cohesion allows the ruling class to see off challenges to the existing order, with the monarchy as keystone. As has been seen in recent years, the judiciary has been a significant node in the suppression of the monarchy reform movement.

These judges, Chairith says, “deserve a round of applause for trying to bring a sense of justice to the institute [judiciary].”

We think there should be little applause. “Justice” in Thailand is class-based, politically-driven and has plenty of what these judges call cronyism. As academics have shown, the judiciary is largely unreformed since the days of the absolute monarchy. Judges are part of the bureaucracy, but are largely self-administered, and they are socialized and taught that they owe their loyalty to the monarch, not to the citizenry, or some notion of fairness.

We think that what these judges are worried about is that now that Thaksin Shinawatra has re-established himself as the country’s boss, there’s a shaking up of political power. They are worried that the political pendulum is shifting to the bourgeoisie and that the traditional elite of senior bureaucrats, generals, and the aristocracy is (again) under threat.

Hence, they want to immunize the judiciary from bourgeois influence (and from Thaksin in particular). They prefer their “calling” to the side of the monarchy, believing that the monarchy is the key to “protecting” the establishment. Vajiralongkorn doesn’t maintain the same networks as his father, but the judges understand that their link to the monarchy is crucial to the monarchy’s continuance.